Our sixth Wednesday evening Training Exercise of 2014 tonight (Last weeks being cancelled due to Incident 20) took place at GMFRS Bolton Central Fire Station, where thanks to GMFRS we also garage our Mountain Rescue Land Rover Ambulance, Callsign Bolton Mobile 2, and our Incident Control vehicle, Callsign Bolton Mobile 6.

Making use of the Fire Station ‘Smokehouse Training Facility Building,’ we had four spinal trauma exercise incident scenarios set up, in the various rooms and confined spaces of this specialist training building.

Thirty two Team Call Out list members took part, split in to four groups, with different team splinting and spinal trauma management equipment in use at each of the four scenarios.

For once this year it was dry, (Mostly) though the short stretcher carry each group had to do from the ‘Training Building’ to our vehicle garage inevitably saw the ‘weather gods’ deciding to unleash some token rain on all!

The exercise debrief confirmed the success of tonight’s training, which included the use of KED Lower Back Splints, Long Boards and Head Blocks, Scoop Stretchers and Head Blocks, and Full Length Vacuum Mattresses, with all ‘Exercise casualties’ played out by participating team members, evacuated out of the building on MIBS Stretchers.

The team expresses its thanks to GMFRS for allowing us the use of this unique facility for our training session this evening, and to GMFRS White Watch, Bolton Central Fire Station, Watch Manager Craig Lunt for kindly facilitating permission for us to use the building.